Ranking every bike upgrade from best to worst (by a pro bike mechanic)

Please check out all the products you see in our videos on:

https://www.bikespeeds.com/shop

In todays episode we rank every bike upgrade and give you our opinions on if you should or shouldn’t buy them…

Follow Us Everywhere @Bikespeeds!

– ♪♫ Artists’ Credit & Links ♫♪ –

► Music by: LAKEY INSPIRED
• SUBSCRIBE to the LAKEY INSPIRED YouTube channel HERE – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOmy​…
• Follow LAKEY INSPIRED on SoundCloud HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired​
• Follow LAKEY INSPIRED on Instagram HERE – https://www.instagram.com/lakeyinspired/​
• Follow LAKEY INSPIRED on Spotify HERE – https://open.spotify.com/artist/3zDGj​…
• Support LAKEY INSPIRED on Patreon HERE – (Optional) https://www.patreon.com/lakeyinspired​

––– • (C) Copyright Notice:

This is FREE royalty free music that has been released under the “Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported “Share Alike” (CC BY-SA 3.0) license.” Details about the license can be found HERE – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/​… – Disclaimer: The creative commons music featured in this video has been modified and adapted. The original music has been remixed/edited and converted into video format. This video was made to create artistic visuals for entertainment purposes, to help promote the music and original artist.

hi and welcome back to bike speeds this week i’m going to be ranking 19 of the most common bike upgrades as a pro mechanic i’ll give them a score out of 10 and then tell you which ones i would choose or avoid and at the end of the video i’ll give you a list of the ones that made 10 out of 10 so let’s get started let’s start off with oversized tires quite a buzz word at the moment this bike originally started off with 23s and we’ve upgraded this to 28s a much larger tire more volume lower pressure far more comfort out on the road you want to research your bike to make sure that you can actually fit the tire size you’re looking at getting into the frame that you’ve got in this instance this was the largest we could go to but they really transform your riding they give far more comfort out on the road and with modern tire technology are no slower than the skinny tires of 23s and 19s from the 70s and 80s so a real upgrade in terms of comfort on the bike quite an expensive upgrade when you’re talking two tires tubes tubeless whatever it be but a very very worthy upgrade and certainly one of the ones you should always look at so for me this is definitely a 10 out of 10 next up ceramic headset bearings ceramic as a word everyone loves to say they got ceramic bearings but in a headset specific i don’t think there’s an awful lot of benefit to having a ceramic bearing although they would wear quite well in this area i think a high quality bearing or a stainless steel full stainless steel bearing is actually a better alternative than a ceramic bearing e either way a good quality bearing or a ceramic bearing will be an upgrade on what most manufacturers put into the bikes but to me they’re a service item and not one worth spending money to upgrade to they’re much better to spend the money in other areas and just use a good quality bearing in this area so for me ceramic headset bearings are a 2 out of 10 one of the premium upgrades in the cycling world is the oversized jockey wheels these are supposed to give a much straighter and smoother line to the chain usually as with this one they come with ceramic bearings and a much much more premium product they really are a luxury item within the cycling world so one of the last upgrades that people tend to do would be very much about marginal gains rather than significant gains so very expensive for very marginal gains but a very nice thing so for me these are a three out of 10 next is clipless pedals these are more a beginner upgrade really because once you go to clipless pedals you don’t go back but as soon as you can get into clipless pedals the better they help you deliver the power more efficiently to the drivetrain and they actually stop your foot bouncing on the pedal over rough terrain so the bike becomes far more stable for you as a rider once you’ve gone into clipless pedals there is some setup costs obviously you have to buy the pedals you also have to find a pair of shoes that fit nicely to clip into them with your cleats on them so they can take a little bit of setting up and getting used to getting your foot out of them is not so much practice start it’s more about muscle memory i think we’ve all fallen when we first went out on clipless pedals we’ve all got stories of how we couldn’t get our foot out quick enough and you’ve certainly seen videos online of people falling over from clipless ped pedals but they are muscle memory once you get that muscle memory they’re very very easy to deal with and very easy to use so uh for that reason of being a little bit tricky to get used to i’d rate those 9 out of 10 if you’re not into tubeless tires a great upgrade is a tpu inner tube you can see here how small and compact these are and they’re very very light in comparison with a traditional inner tube very very easy to fit a one and done put them in and you’re ready to go they’re a little bit more hardy against punctures than traditional tubes they sit in your spares bag nice and easily being so small so for me these are an absolute must-have upgrade for a tubed tire so for me 10 out of 10 next up i’m going to talk about bar tape it’s a very common thing for a new rider to get pins and needles and numbness in their hands when riding often they believe that a nice thick bar tape will solve that problem it often won’t it’s usually down to bike fit or just not developing the core muscles to make the riding not give you the pins and needles in the palms of the hands but if you’re a seasoned rider or in fact if you’re a new rider it’s a very cheap upgrade to do so this on this bike we’ve got a nice 3m cushioned comfort bar tape that will wash down and clean down nicely rather than the some of the ones that are more of a material base that get dirty very quickly so it’s a good cheap upgrade and for me it’s a solid 5 out of 10 next up we have a bit of bling for you a carbon bottle cage the beauty of carbon is that you can buy it at any price point you can buy a nice cheap one or a lovely branded one like this that fits the bike perfectly nice bit of weight saving very very easy to get hold of buy it one day fit it the next and you can bling up your bike so nice talking point to have carbon bottle cages so for me a 7 out of 10 next up we’re talking carbon handlebars you can see here we’ve got this unique double stacked system here but a carbon handlebar is a very very nice thing to have they’re usually more ergonomically shaped for your hands and for comfort they’re usually more arrow so they’re perform slightly better than a standard bar but very very costly upgrade to install not only do you have the cost of the bars but also the cabling and the routing and everything else for the brakes and the gears so they can be quite time consuming to fit so probably an upgrade you would look more at in terms of a bike that is new maybe an upgrade to a new bike with a nice set of arrow handlebars so for me these are a four out of 10 let’s talk about cables for those still on cable actuated brakes and gears a lovely upgrade is a super slick cable most manufacturers use a cable that have a coating on the cable that can clog in the outers most noticeably on a bike with internal rooted gears where they may have tubes inside the frames this ravels up and clogs those and gives you very poor shifting or braking performance so we replace all those types of cables with a lovely super slick cable it’s a tightly wound stainless steel cable we do actually sell these on our website there is a link in the description below so do check out our website and help support the channel when you’re upgrading your cables but aside from that we fit these daily they’re a lovely smooth cable really really work well and i definitely give these a 10 out of 10 next up is premium brand chains in my experience a lot of shifting issues are when people have replaced the original chain with an upgraded chain where it’s just not quite sinking and shifting nicely the original manufacturer chains are often painted designs that work with their chain sets and group sets so in my opinion always stick to a manufacturer’s chain never upgrade your chain so for me an upgraded chain is a 1 out of 10 another luxury upgrade is a q- ring or oval chain ring these are the oval chain rings that as you turn the pedals will alter the gearing just marginally as you’re turning and putting the power through the pedal i like them for long distance riding anything 50 mi and beyond i find them very very comfortable and i feel the bike has a much much smoother flow to it just feels the riding is much much more smooth and subtle so for me on a long distance ride a q ring or oval chain ring is absolutely perfect so again quite a costly upgrade a little bit of a luxury item maybe but to me a lovely thing to have and for me personally on a long-distance ride they’re a 9 out of 10 disc brakes you will get a disc brake upgrade if you’re on rim brakes at the moment and you buy a new bike most new bikes are on disc brakes but they are more expensive to install they take a little bit more setting up and they are a little bit more temperamental than a rim brake so they will require a little bit of upkeep but you cannot argue with the performance of a disc brake they are way superior to a rim brake excellent braking performance in both the wet and the dry so they’re a great upgrade we’ve actually been uh accused in the comments of being uh disc brake haters rim brake lovers or the other way round uh depending on the way you’ve viewed what we’ve said in the past so we’re going to sit right on the fence on this one let you decide and we’ll rate these a five out of 10 next is the power meter in this case we’ve got a power arm on here on the left hand side you can get power crank sets power pedals these really are the next level of cycling if you’re really taking your cycling seriously these will record your data and really improve your training and your cycling so these are an 8 out of 10 because whilst there is no negatives to them they’re a very very expensive accessory so 8 out of 10 next up is wheels it’s the number one improvement you can make to your bike most manufacturers tend to skimp a little bit on the wheels they tend to put the money into other areas so you may have got a bike that’s got an aluminium wheel you can upgrade to a carbon fiber wheel you’ll get a massive weight gain save in there you can get different profiles of wheels according to what riding you’re doing you can get bladed spokes which have arrow gains different bearings the improvements that each wheel set offer are vast so you need to do your research when investing in a set of wheels to make sure they’re the right wheels for you but the gains to a wheel set the way a bike rides and performs is just amazing really i’ve often took bikes out where i’ve changed wheels and you can’t quite believe it’s the same bike so always invest in good wheels so these are definitely 10 out of 10 tubeless tires they’ve been well adopted in the mountain bike world but in road bikes they’re a little bit more controversial they can cause problems people have horror stories with these out on the road where they’ve had problems with punctures i personally have never had a problem with them but they do have a certain amount of cost with setting them up so not only have you got to buy the tire you’ve got to buy new rim tape you’ve got to buy the sealant different valves and so on so they can be a little bit more problematical to set up but once set up they should be no problems and i’ve certainly never had any problems but they are a controversial subject even to this day so for me these are a five out of 10 controversial one now is ceramic bearings people often talk about upgrading their bottom bracket to a ceramic bottom bracket but i think you have to look at the bike as a whole so you if you’re doing any ceramic bearings you want to put wheel bearings in bottom bracket bearings in hub bearings and the jockey wheels and the bike will flow smoother than anything you’ve ever ridden before i actually love ceramic bearings i do that to most of my bikes it is a costly thing to do but if you can afford it a solid 10 out of 10 next up is the saddle upgrade it’s almost the first upgrade you want to do to any bike there are many many different types of saddles so you can get different lengths different widths different materials for different types of riding and different types of bike so with this one we have the dip down at the front for the arrow position you may have a short stubby saddle for time triing you may have a long slender saddle for racing so there are many many different styles and sizes you want to research your saddle before you buy it but manufacturers tend to just put one generic saddle across the range of bikes that they’re selling so it’s the absolute first upgrade for me to any bike is to make sure that i’ve got the right saddle on it so for that reason it’s a 10 out of 10 so finally on our list for a lovely upgrade is of course electronic shifting two main players really are shimano and shramm the shimano system is a little bit less intuitive perhaps than the shramm in that if you’ve got 12speed shifters they do need to be wired in to upgrade the firmware that you will probably have to go to a shop to have achieved and from my point of view as a shop it was much more costly to get into servicing di2 than it was the shramm system which you can do all on the app and do all your firmware updates on the app and i also find with the shramm with the separate batteries they’re a little bit easier to swap out and charge where obviously with the di2 with the battery in the seat post or underneath it’s a little bit more fiddly to deal with a battery issue but aside from that both systems are lovely to ride joyous and make the every ride on a bike with electronic shifting an occasion so certainly as a retrofit upgrade quite expensive it’s very very difficult to upgrade this on some bikes retrofitted but if you get the option to buy a new bike and you can spec electronic shifting and it’s a click button definitely definitely go with electronic shifting so for me electronic shifting as an upgrade is definitely a 10 out of 10 so that’s the most common upgrades considered we did have a few 10 out of 10 there remember this is just my own personal views and thoughts obviously the wheels the saddle electronic shifting the tpu tubes the oversized tires the super slick cables and the ceramic bearings so quite an array of jobs there that would improve and enhance any ride so do drop in the comments any that we may have forgotten some maybe that are your favorites and do like and subscribe and we’ll see you again very very soon bye for now